6 Reasons to Analyze Your Referral Patterns

Posted January 19, 2017 by Don Rodden

There is no real value in analyzing my referring physicians. Right…?

1. Identify specialties missing from your practice

Analyzing referring physician patterns reveals the absence or low volume of certain specialties that would normally refer diagnostic exams. This represents an opportunity for you or the facility you serve to take action to grow this market segment.

2. Discover low or missing types of exams

Pathologists and Radiologists have a good pulse of what diagnostic exams need to be part of a balanced practice. You’ve either discovered these intuitively, from historical experience or from practicing in other locations.

By identifying exam types that should be in your practice mix, you’re empowered to respond effectively. You can educate referring physicians and patients, directly market your services and/or encourage your facility to focus on actionable steps to expand these volumes.

3. Pinpoint where your competition is winning

Even a high-level overview of referring physician patterns quickly reveals situations where your competition is winning procedures that you are well equipped to perform.

4. Trend changes

As you monitor comparative volumes of referring patterns, you can uncover:
Positive trend changes –
Creating the opportunity to express appreciation to the sources of the referrals.
Negative trend changes –
Empowering you to explore the underlying cause of the change and adjust.

5. Identify patient influenced decisions

As you analyze the data, you may discover that the source of trend changes is not other physician providers, but rather it’s patients and their insurance companies. The informed patient is increasingly driving decisions that directly impact your work volume and bottom line.

This derivative of your referring pattern analysis can reveal payor contracts you may need to revisit, education to your patient base of the quality and timeliness of your services or any number of other attributes to win back these volumes.

Many healthcare entities either simply do not have the resources to focus on these patterns or they have bigger fish to fry. You can add value to your relationship by providing opportunities to generate new revenue or recover prior exam volumes which helps both you and the facilities you serve.

Focusing on just these six attributes will directly and positively impact your revenue.

While our primary purpose and mission is revenue cycle management, our leaders have decades of physician practice management experience. Call for a free consultation, for up to 1 hour with either John Stiles, Brendala Anspaugh or Don Rodden. We will gladly sign any reasonable confidentiality agreement and dialogue with you further about how you can lead your group in a transformative direction.